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Summit A•R has been named among the 2026 Best Places to Work in Collections, an industry recognition announced at ACA International’s Annual Convention & Expo in Orlando on July 24. The program is run jointly by ACA International and Best Companies Group, and it’s one of the few awards in the collections industry that isn’t about revenue, recovery rates, or portfolio size. It’s about what it’s like working day in, day out at a collection agency, according to the people who show up and do that job every day.
For a company built on the idea that how you treat people matters, that’s the kind of recognition that means something to us.
Criteria for this Award
Unlike other ‘awards,’ Best Places to Work in Collections isn’t a self-nomination badge or paid recognition. Companies that enter go through a two-part evaluation: Best Companies Group reviews the employer’s workplace practices, programs, and benefits, and then surveys the employees about their day-to-day experience. Both halves have to hold up for a company to make the list.
That structure is exactly why the award carries weight in an industry where turnover can run high, including people who leave the industry altogether. Collections is a demanding job. Agents spend their days having difficult conversations about money, and the agencies that keep good people happy and loyal tend to be the ones who do something differently.
The 2026 program recognized winners across small, medium, and large employer categories. While we didn’t make the top 5 this year, Summit A•R is honored to be among the honorees, joining a roster of agencies from across the country that each underwent the same two-part evaluation.
“This award belongs to our people. They bring professionalism, empathy and persistence to challenging conversations every day, while representing our clients the right way,” Tim Turner, President and Founder of Summit A*R. “What makes this honor especially meaningful is that employee feedback is a major part of the process. We have always believed that when you treat your employees well, give them the right training and tools, and trust them to do excellent work, clients and consumers feel the difference.”
The P.H.D. Philosophy, Reflected Back
Since the beginning, we’ve operated under a Preserve Human Dignity (P.H.D.) Philosophy. In other words, treating people with respect is the foundation Summit is built on. (We don’t use automated robo-dialers or harass or mislead our clients’ debtors.) So it only makes sense that we value our team and built a family-atmosphere working environment.
It’s worth pointing out again that this kind of recognition can’t be manufactured. A mission statement on a website doesn’t shape positive employee survey responses. They come from whether management is supportive, and whether the day-to-day reality of the job matches what leadership says it values.
“We get the time and support to handle difficult conversations the right way. We’re trusted to listen, find solutions, and treat people with dignity instead of rushing through calls. That makes the work more meaningful and creates a team you genuinely want to be part of.”
Why Experienced Collectors Don’t Leave
Like we say on our homepage: every collector on staff carries a minimum of ten years of experience. That’s not an accident. No workplace with a poor internal culture can retain staff long enough to build that kind of tenure across an entire team. High turnover means constant retraining, inconsistent client communication, and collectors who never get the chance to become genuinely good at handling complex accounts.
Summit’s numbers prove what that kind of stability produces. We’ve recovered more than $250 million for our clients to date, with over 25,000 accounts resolved in the past year alone. Results like that aren’t built by rotating through new hires every few months, but from a brilliant team that sticks around long enough to actually know what they’re doing- which is a direct byproduct of the workplace culture this award is measuring.
“I’ve stayed with Summit A*R because the respect here is real. Leadership listens, coworkers support one another, and experience is valued. You can build a career here without compromising how you believe people should be treated, and that has always mattered to me.”
A Culture That Extends to Debtor Communication
It’s easy to treat “best place to work” awards as an internal HR story that has nothing to do with the client or the consumer or business on the other end of the line, but in collections specifically, the two are tightly connected. A collector who feels respected, trained properly, and supported by their employer approaches a difficult phone call differently than one who’s burned out and underpaid.
Our client reviews consistently describe collectors as patient, respectful, and easy to work with, even in a situation most people would rather avoid entirely. That’s not a coincidence.
What This Signals to People Considering a Career in Collections
The collections industry has a reputation problem when it comes to hiring, and it’s not entirely undeserved. Plenty of agencies base their business model on a negative view of debtors and a cynical view on collections. You can tell because they treat the agent role as a call center job with high quotas and higher turnover, which makes it hard to attract people who want to build an actual career in the field.
For someone who wants to help people pay their debt, that distinction matters. Our staff likes treating people with respect and preserving dignity and business relationships.
Over Three Decades of Building Toward This
Summit A•R was founded in 1996, which makes 2026 a thirty-one-year milestone on top of this recognition. Thirty years in an industry with notoriously thin margins and high compliance risk doesn’t happen by accident or a revolving door of staff either. Our workplace culture has been part of our operating model since long before there was an award attached to it. This year, that approach simply got a name and a public stage.
For businesses evaluating a collection partner, culture isn’t usually the first thing on the checklist. Recovery rates and compliance records tend to get the attention. But an agency that can hold onto experienced collectors for a decade or more, that scores well on both employer practices and employee sentiment, and that treats consumers with the same respect it treats its own staff, tends to be the kind of partner *cough, cough* like us, that consistently doubles the national debt recovery averages.
We’re currently working with clients across:
and several other collection categories. Check to see if we’re hiring as we continue to grow.
If you’re interested in a debt recovery partner with a genuinely different track record, reach out for a free consultation.
